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The American Psychiatric Association is set to add "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of psychiatric disorders. A kid has "DMDD" if she or he has "severe recurrent temper outbursts that are grossly out of proportion in intensity or duration to the situation... at least three times a week."

As Wired's David Dobbs notes, this describes basically all kids ("No, I don't want to wear my rain boots!") at some time or another. So why is this being considered? Here's Neuroskeptic's explanation:

DMDD seems to be nothing to do with mood, but instead covers a pattern of misbehavior which is already covered by not one but two labels already. Why add a misleadingly-named third?

Well, the back-story is that in the past ten years, many American kids and even toddlers have got diagnosed with ‘child bipolar disorder‘ – a disease considered extremely rare everywhere else. To stop this, the DSM-5 committee want to introduce DMDD as a replacement. This is the officially stated reason for introducing it. On the evidence of this paper and others it wouldn’t even achieve this dubious goal.

The possibility of just going to back to the days when psychiatrists didn’t diagnose prepubescent children with bipolar (except in very rare cases) seems to not be on the table.

A man has been arrested for repeatedly sneaking onto a farm in Cornwall, England, covering himself in cow-shit and masturbating. This is the third time he was caught at it.

It sounds like he really made the farm-owners' lives miserable. From a This is the West Country article:

“The family have to regularly check their livestock, outbuildings and equipment, as he has masturbated in a muck spreader and set fire to outbuildings, killing livestock in frustration when they cleaned out their farm equipment in an attempt to stop him from this lewd and obscene habit.”

Many designers enjoy the interfaces seen in science fiction films and television shows. Freed from the rigorous constraints of designing for real users, sci-fi production designers develop blue-sky interfaces that are inspiring, humorous, and even instructive. By carefully studying these "outsider" user interfaces, designers can derive lessons that make their real-world designs more cutting edge and successful.

Sex with Technology

Another category of sex-related interfaces consists of people having sex with technology in some form. When such sex technology is physical, it can range in appearance from mechanistic devices to being nearly indistinguishable from sex with a real person.

Devices

Sex devices are rare in the survey, with only two examples. Both are depicted as dystopian. In the first example, THX-1138, the oppressive state has provided technology to address and control citizens’ basic needs for sexual release.

At home after a hard day at work, THX-1138 sits down on a couch and turns on a volumetric projection of a woman dancing sensually to percussive music. A machine drops down from the ceiling, latches on to his penis, and mechanically moves up and down for exactly 30 seconds until he ejaculates.

Then its tiny red light switches from red to green, the machine retracts back into the ceiling, and he begins flipping through channels to find other entertainment. Read the rest

ThinkGeek's done a Tenth Doctor "costume tee" that's pretty great. I'm assuming that all that detail is silk-screened with fool-the-eye shadows, and not actual additional material sewn onto the shirt's front (though that would be megaboss and someone should totally make it).

"Projecteo" is Benjamin Redford's fully funded Kickstarter project to produce simple, tiny, hackable slide projectors for your digital photos. You pay to have slide-wheels with your digital photos on them produced, then show them in darkened rooms using this tiny, LED-powered projector. The gadget is pretty adorable. You can get them for $25, including a slide-wheel.

Projecteo has been designed so you can disassemble it. This will not only make them easier to recycle but it means you can pull it open and see what's going on inside. There, you will find a super bright LED, capacitors and resistors, a switch, a decade counter and three batteries. Feel free to hack away! We can't wait to see your creations.

Normally, I would never post about a nebulous movie rumor, but the potential for discussion and mystery is so cool that I couldn't resist. It concerns the possible cinematic introduction of one of the actual, original founding members of the Avengers from the Marvel comics: Janet van Dyne, aka the Wasp. Rumors concerning the Wasp in the first Avengers movie definitely existed before they were squashed, but lately, we've been treated to a bunch of hints that might actually make this a credible subject for speculation.

So, why bother doing an entire post about speculation? The stakes are high, if you've been hoping for more Marvel heroines on the big screen, especially one with superpowers who could also be in The Avengers 2. It's also just so irresistibly old-school Marvel. Let's look at some of the evidence that might just point to the Wasp. Read the rest

The Oatmeal's "Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web" really captures a lot of the joys and sorrows of working in a creative field in the age of the Internet, especially the toxicity of spending too much time reading nasty comments, and the difficulty of maintaining self discipline. My one quibble -- and it's a major one -- is the business about "inspiration."

For me the major turning point in my working life was when I figured out that the work I produced when I felt inspired wasn't any different from the work I produced when I felt uninspired -- at least a few months later. I think that "inspiration" has to do with your own confidence in your ideas, your blood sugar, the external pressures in your life, and a million other factors only tangentially related to the actual quality of the work. If creative work makes you sane and happy (and if it supports you financially), it's terrible to harness it to something you can't control, like "inspiration" -- it sucks to only be happy when something you can't control occurs.

The major impact of the Petraeus affair has nothing to do with the military, sex, or celebrity -- it is that there is no such thing as anonymous, and that the US government is able to access internet and credit card records without warrants, just because they ask to. Your digital life is not private from the government, ever; therefore, your life is not private. Read the details in this important reporting by +Andrew Leonard:

"[This] debacle confirms something that some privacy experts have been warning about for years: Government surveillance of ordinary citizens is now cheaper and easier than ever before. Without needing to go before a judge, the government can gather vast amounts of information about us with minimal expenditure of manpower. We used to be able to count on a certain amount of privacy protection simply because invading our privacy was hard work. That is no longer the case. Our always-on, Internet-connected, cellphone-enabled lives are an open door to Big Brother."

While the video is, sadly, unembeddable, it is worth the extra click if you are in serious need of depressing yourself into oblivion. The Movie Miscellany has compiled a tear-soaked supercut of 100 of cinema's most gut-wrenching death scenes -- the ones that have made you sad, the ones that made you curl up into a fetal position and weep, the ones that mad you have to call your mom... they're all there! The full list of deaths is on the site, in case you accidentally missed (or spared yourself from) some of the scenes. Actually, the extra click over to the video page is good. You'll have time to grab tissues or call a friend for support. Oh, and don't bother looking for any of Sean Bean's many screen deaths. He has his own supercut. (via io9) Read the rest